How would you like to build a global enterprise-scale data access infrastructure? A daunting prospect, yes? Imagine creating a system that could make any subset of any significant data resource in your organization available where it's needed without incurring insane implementation and maintenance costs ... sounds too good to be true?
Last week here in Backspin I discussed how real-world "things" that aren't easily augmented with digital instrumentation, such as bicycles, cars and even dogs, can be indirectly connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) using physical ID tags and online proxies. This is, as I pointed out, a powerful concept.
This week two outstanding products: The Jynxbox Android HD and Seagate Wireless Plus
Not everything needs to, or can, connect to the Internet of Things by IP
Considering the enormous webcam market and the number of products available it's hard to believe that anyone could come up with anything new, novel and useful but, impressively, that's just what Logitech has managed to do with its Broadcaster Wi-Fi Webcam, a really well-designed webcam for OS X and iOS only.
Some time ago I had a call with a company that ran data centers they claimed were "green." Their argument for their greenness was they purchased power with green credits, which meant they paid a premium for electricity to fund alternative energy programs. Along with that they had a car park full of solar cells.
First up, serious networking stuff concerning Apple and how iOS supports VPNs and how it won't in future.
Facebook's big announcement was a big "so what?" and minimal innovation at its finest
Business travel is, under the best of circumstances, a royal pain in the butt, and when you're roaming internationally with a smartphone and need to make some calls and keep up with email, you face a zonking great bill when you get home.
Gibbs wrestles with a lost medical insurance payment ... for five hours
Every now and then a company appears that makes a slew of cool products. The latest of these is Satechi, which I think should use the tag line "purveyors of fine gadgets." Satechi just sent me a few very cool items and in a couple of weeks I shall review their remarkable Wireless Mini Router/Repeater. Today, I have two of their presentation controllers, both of which include laser pointers.
Everywhere you go these days -- every store, every urban street, every car park, every ATM -- there are video cameras watching where you go and what you do. Just what are "they" (whoever "they" are) doing with all of that video surveillance?
The question of whether you're getting the bandwidth you pay for is one that just doesn't go away. Twice in the last few months I've suspected my ADSL connection of running slow and, sure enough, despite the modem telling me I had 3Mbps down and 500Kbps up, for whatever reason, restarting the modem fixed the problem.
Microsoft has just been hit, again, with a massive fine by the EU for making the same mistake all over again
When you're talking to a n00b -- say, your CEO or VP of sales and marketing (or maybe even your CIO) -- it can be hard to get them to understand just how big and complex the Internet is. Sure, they hear about the billions of people on the 'Net and all of the companies making money through e-commerce of one kind or another (which hopefully includes yours), but what they will often have a problem grasping is the sheer scale of the Internet and how it's grown. What they need is a visual aid.
